


what is family?

by tempestaurora



Series: wayward sons [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Jeopardy, Sick Fic, may appreciation fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-23 02:44:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17071994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestaurora/pseuds/tempestaurora
Summary: “Just like my mother used to make,” May announced, setting dinner on the table.“Your mother didn’t cook store-bought carbonara,” Peter replied, passing over the serving spoon.“And your mother didn’t teach you to sass your elders,” she said, rolling her eyes.Peter snorted, and Harley shook his head. “That was a weak your mom joke.”May served up Harley’s plate. “I’m not going to your mom joke an orphan, Harley. I have taste.”





	what is family?

**Author's Note:**

> thank u to ciaconnaa again for literally writing this for me

Harley collapsed into the chair opposite Peter at May’s tiny kitchen table. They shared an uneasy look before glancing back to the smoke in the kitchen, and May, emerging from it with that night’s offering: a half-burnt carbonara.

“Just like my mother used to make,” she announced, setting it on the table.

“Your mother didn’t cook store-bought carbonara,” Peter replied, passing over the serving spoon.

“And _your_ mother didn’t teach you to sass your elders,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Peter snorted, and Harley shook his head. “That was a weak _your mom_ joke.”

May served up Harley’s plate. “I’m not going to _your mom_ joke an orphan, Harley. I have taste.”

Peter coughed out a laugh as Harley cackled opposite him, and soon enough the three of them were eating their dinner, picking around the charred bacon bits.

Harley came over once a week for dinner, but sometimes he’d be over half the nights in the week and May wouldn’t let him leave without some food in him. It had started when Mr Stark and Pepper had gone away for a conference, and Harley admitted that he was planning on a diet of only Cheetos for the weekend. May had invited him to stay in their apartment, Harley had taken Peter’s spare bunk for himself, and the rest was history.

(Peter wouldn’t forget the look of sheer joy on Harley’s face the first time he ever saw Peter’s bunkbed.

“It’s just a bunkbed, dude.”

“ _Just_ a bunkbed? Man, Abbie and I _always_ wanted a bunkbed! We were obsessed with getting one as kids.” He’d swung himself up onto the top bunk and grinned at the ceiling. “I’m so gonna fall off this thing.”)

Through burnt carbonara, Peter said, “quiz cards,” and Harley nodded, pulling a set of handmade cards from his hoodie pocket. Peter swallowed and looked to May. “He’s been helping me train for the Decathlon contest next week.” Harley was decidedly not on the Decathlon team, but he _was_ (for a reason no one could discern) in the Decathlon group chat, came to more afterschool meetings than Peter ever showed up for, and even got himself on the list to _go_ to the contests at the school’s expense.

Harley flicked through the cards. “Thomas Edison’s last breath is held in a vial. Where is it?”

Peter pulled a face. “That’s not on the cards.”

“No, it’s just a fun fact I heard today and wanted to tell you. Guess.”

Peter shoved a forkful of pasta into his mouth. “The Smithsonian?”

“Detroit,” May answered.

Harley pointed his fork to May with a smile. “Ding ding ding, point one to May. Keep up, Peter. To be precise, it’s in the Henry Ford museum in Detroit.”

May nodded knowingly. “I heard that on an old episode of _QI._ ”

“Alright.” Harley read the next card. “The year it became illegal to send children via parcel mail.” May snorted. Peter rolled his eyes. “Answer in the form of a question.”

“It’s Decathlon, not _Jeopardy._ ”

“You’re an even bigger nerd than I thought if you think there’s a difference. Answer.”

Peter paused. “What is 1913?”

“Correct. Next: Nazis made this illegal on pain of death.”

May quirked an eyebrow. “There’s a _lot_ they made illegal on pain of death.”

Peter shrugged. “This isn’t on the cards, either.” He glanced at May. “It’s Harley though, so I know the answer. What is apes doing the Heil Hitler salute?”

“ _Seriously?_ ”

Harley laughed. “That’s two to Parker. Oh! I got another one. Define noodling.”

“Asshole.”

“Peter,” May warned.

“If you knew what noodling is, you’d say the same thing.”

 

*

 

The next day was Decathlon practice (and, yes, Harley _was_ there) and the day after, Harley hacked up a lung in the boy’s bathroom. Peter cringed, leaning against the stall door as Harley retched into the toilet bowl.

“It’s probably food poisoning,” Peter decided, more to himself than to Harley, who was steadfastly ignoring him in favour of vomiting. “Either that or you were cursed by a demonic entity. Maybe it’s karma for eating the last muffin last weekend.”

Harley’s retching stopped for all of four seconds before it started up again. He’d left in a rush half way through English, his eyes going comically wide before running out of the room and into the luckily-close-by bathroom opposite. Peter collected a hall pass before going after him, explaining to his teacher that Harley had been complaining about feeling sick for two hours previous.

“When you’re done, I’ll take you to the nurse’s office,” Peter said after a minute of gross, pained noises. “She’ll send you home.”

There was a cough, then, “Tony and Pepper are upstate today. They won’t be around.”

The door opened, and Peter jumped forward just in time. Harley emerged from the stall looking like six of the nine rings of hell. He drank water from the tap and didn’t meet Peter’s eye until he was done.

“That’s what secondary emergency contacts are for,” Peter said with a shrug. “It’ll be fine.”

“I don’t have a second.”

“Sure, you do.”

“I don’t-”

Peter swung an arm around Harley’s shoulder, leading him out of the bathroom and towards the nurse’s office.

“Peter, no one’s gonna come get me. Let’s go back to class. There’s only two more hours.” He tried to steer the two of them back the way they came, but Peter was stronger by default and Harley was three-quarters of the way to hell’s gates, so Peter kept them in the right direction.

“May will come get you,” Peter promised, and the caught the way Harley’s face relaxed, his eyes darting to Peter’s.

“She will?”

Peter nodded. “Yeah, dude. She made Mr Stark put her down as your secondary _ages_ ago. She’ll come get you.”

Harley mumbled something Peter couldn’t make out, and the two settled into the plastic chairs of the nurse’s office while the nurse called May. Peter fetched Harley’s things from English and waited out by the main office until he heard the familiar squeak of May’s Honda-Toyota-piece-of-crap-car with a door in red while the body of the vehicle was blue.

She smiled at the sight of the two of them, signing Harley out as they pulled themselves to their feet.

“Tony agreed you’ll be coming back to ours,” she said. “He won’t be back from the facility until seven at the earliest, but it might be easier if you spend the night.” Harley nodded, mute. She shot a glance over his head, to Peter. “Pick up some soup on the way home, would you? Chicken, if possible.”

“You got it.”

Harley sent Peter one last look before May led him out the front door, and Peter span on his foot, making his way back to class.

 

*

 

There was a robbery at the bodega he was buying the soup in, because of _course_ there was.

 

*

 

May wasn’t in when Peter arrived at the apartment, and neither was the Hondayota mess of a car. Peter opened the front door in the only way he could; by turning the handle ninety degrees to the right, shoving up and then forward to dislodge it from the door frame.

Harley was on the sofa, bundled in three blankets, as David Attenborough spoke softly on the TV over footage of whales swimming in the ocean. He glanced over as Peter shut the door, swinging the bag with the soup from his good hand.

“She got called into work,” Harley said, groaning as he tried to sit up. “She said she’d only be an hour.”

Peter nodded, pulling his backpack off his back and dumping it under the dining table. He winced when his bad hand touched straps but ignored it, fishing out the soup.

“Is it chicken?” Harley asked in a small voice.

“Sure is.”

Harley flopped against the back of the sofa, pressing his cheek against it and staring at Peter with wide eyes. “Will you cook it for me? Please?”

Peter barked out a laugh. “Oh, how the Mighty Harley Keener hath fallen,” he said. “Are you high on medicine or something?”

“I’m sick.”

“I’m Peter, nice to meet you, sick.”

Harley flopped back down, pulling the blankets back up to his ears.

Peter poured the soup into a pan and turned on the hob to heat it through, before pulling down the mid kit from the cupboard. He huffed, trying to open the fabric bandages with one hand, and then with his teeth, before resorting to slouching over to Harley and asking him to do it for him.

Harley frowned at Peter’s hand, a mess of black and blue bruising.

“What happened?”

“It’s just fractured,” he said. “I’d know if it were broken.”

Harley blinked and repeated, “What happened?”

Peter shook his head, accepting the now partially unrolled bandage, and got to work pulling it around his hand. “It’s nothing. Just a little off duty Spiderman stuff.”

“Between now and the last time I saw you.”

Peter nodded and returned to the soup, fishing out a wooden spoon from the kitchen utensil pot (shaped like a chicken). As he stirred, he watched Harley pull himself back up to sitting. Peter pulled an ice pack from the freezer and wrapped it beneath half of the bandages, so he wouldn’t have to hold it.

Then he poured out the soup into a bowl, found a tray down beside the counter, and delivered it to Harley.

“Your soup, Your Majesty,” Peter said, presenting it with a mock bow.

He climbed onto the other end of the sofa, as Harley ate – drank? How did one consume soup, Peter pondered – pressing his feet against Harley’s leg in an attempt to cover them with the blankets. They watched David Attenborough in relative quiet, Peter being careful not to nudge his bad hand and Harley being careful not to spill any of his precious soup, until May returned home.

“Harley,” she called upon entering.

“What is the world’s biggest asshole?” Peter answered, making Harley scoff.

May flicked the back of Peter’s head. “Don’t be mean, he’s sick.” She moved down the sofa to run her fingers through Harley’s hair. With a lot more affection than she used with Peter, she asked, “How’re you feeling?”

Harley hummed. “Gross.”

May nodded. “That sounds about right.” She leaned over, plucking the empty glass from beside the sofa, taking it into the kitchen. May filled it with water before returning it to Harley – he placed it on the tray with his soup bowl. “You need to keep up with the fluids,” she said. “If you run out, just ask me or Peter, okay, sweetie?”

Harley smiled just a little, and Peter was struck with the memory of his mother in Tennessee, of how he and May fit together without question or preamble. The Parkers and the Keeners were the same kind of stock, and everyone looked out for everyone in those kinds of families.

May looked over to her other charge, then blinked at what she saw. “Why’s your hand all bandaged up? And _badly_ , might I add?”

“I’m not a talented bandager yet,” Peter replied. May stepped around the sofa, pushing Peter’s legs out of the way and planting herself between the boys. She took his hand in hers, frowning at the ice pack he’d stuck in between the fabric.

“What did you do?”

“Uh – it’s nothing bad.”

“It’s fractured,” Harley supplied. May’s eyebrows raised to her hairline. “Minimum. He doesn’t know.”

“Peter.”

“May-”

“You have five seconds to explain yourself.”

He hummed for two of them. “There was a robbery! When I was out buying soup! It’s no biggie – I was totally fine until the dude tried to _hit_ me with his gun at the same time I went to punch him! I mean – who _hits someone_ with their gun? The trigger is right there!”

“Gun amateurs,” Harley supplied. “People with no bullets. People who support crime but don’t support _gun crime._ ”

“He hit me with his gun, it counts as gun crime.”

“Does it though?”

May was still frowning. Peter scrambled. “It’s fine! It’s okay, honest. I’d know if it was broken – it’ll be all healed up by tomorrow. And you know? The bruise kind of looks like – Ljubjana has been the administrative centre of this country since 1991.”

Harley sighed. “What is Slovenia?”

Peter grinned, stopped grinning quite as much at May’s disapproving glare, then tried to make his grin convincing to make her forgive him. She sighed and reluctantly started unravelling the bandages.

“You know, at your last parent-teacher conference, one of your teachers thought you two would probably end up ruling the world together, and now I know for certain they were wrong.” She steadied Peter’s hand, studying the bruise, before starting to rewrap the bandage. “The two of you are going to destroy the world and you’re going to do it by mistake.”

 

*

 

Before the boys went to bed that night, Harley, now hocked up on cough medicine too, as it wasn’t food poisoning nor a curse, but the flu, wrapped May in a hug particularly unlike his normal ones. Rather than it being fast, he flopped against her side on the sofa and stretched an arm out over her.

May caught Peter’s eye as she grinned.

“The best aunt in the world that we love so much despite her trying to feed us burnt food every Wednesday,” Harley said.

Peter leant his head on her shoulder from the other side, humming. “What is May?”

“Ding ding ding, we have a winner.”

 

*

 

Peter gave Harley a Peter-kind of hug before bed, because he might as well take advantage of Harley’s state. Then Harley took the lower bunk, because he definitely would’ve died if he took the upper and fell asleep before Peter had even changed into his pyjamas.

May propped herself against the door as Peter hefted himself into the top bunk.

“What are you smiling at?” Peter whispered, narrowing his eyes at her.

“Oh, nothing.”

“May?”

She shook her head once, then slipped her fingers around the door handle. “It’s just amusing, is all. How life works out. You always wanted a brother.” May blew him a kiss. “Night, sweetie.”

“Night, May.”

May tugged the door shut, with a quiet _click!_ and Peter smiled in the dark. She was right, of course. Peter _had_ always wanted a brother. He was glad that the universe had at least been kind enough to give him that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading! talk to me in the comments! this was short with like no plot and the next one is short and honestly needs massive amounts of editing. ur not gonna like the next one. Things Happen.


End file.
